In the light of this account it becomes clear that while an altered condition of the nervous system and a state of increased suggestibility were constantly manifested in Mesmer's _salle des crises_, yet Mesmer did not at all appreciate the nature of the process by which the effects were produced, nor the condition which he brought about in his patients. In brief, Mesmerism in the hands of Mesmer was clearly only an antecedent of hypnotism. Yet certain of the more detailed descriptions of the scenes about the baquet unmistakably indicate that some of Mesmer's subjects went into a true hypnotic condition; that as many or more were the victims of more or less complex hysterical attacks is equally clear. But to this aspect of the phenomena, Mesmer was entirely inattentive. His attention was devoted to the elaboration of the physical agencies which in his view were the cause of the phenomena, and to the production of the rather violent symptoms of the crisis which he always regarded as an essential part of the curative procedure. He elaborated the baquet, filled it with bottles and glass and iron filings and water arranged in fanciful ways, and in some mystical sense suggestive of magnetic influences. Mesmerism thus consisted of the induction of crises by animal magnetism, as concentrated in Mesmer's person and assisted by the baquet, by passes and physical manipulations. Farther than this Mesmer never went in his comprehension of the phenomena that we now know as hypnotism. Indeed, when he was confronted with Puységur's subjects in the somnambulic state, he regarded the production of this true hypnotic condition as foolish, and considered it to be only a subordinate phase of the magnetic crisis. Towards the close of his life, and when the turmoil and the glory of his Parisian career were memories of the past, when he had had abundant opportunity for reflection and for the observation of the altered condition which the status of Mesmerism had assumed, Mesmer still maintained unaltered the dogmas of animal magnetism.